Fortia: using data to watch over compliance

Participating in the inaugural season of L’Atelier BNP Paribas‘ FinTech Accelerator, Fortia has taken a particularly unique route. The start-up immediately teamed up with BNP Paribas Securities Services (BP2S) to co-develop Innova, its solution based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Reda Bouakel, one of the founders of the new business, tells us about this partnership, which was kicked off through a fortunate chain of events.

Who are the founders of Fortia?

We are a team of 4 engineers. We met at different points in our careers, and we share the same vision of our management challenges and compliance risks. Some of us are compliance specialists in banking and finance, while others are technical specialists. We play well off each other, conceiving solutions that we’ve built using pivotal disruptive technologies. That’s our strength: a combination of complementary profiles!

What types of management challenges and compliance risks do you face?

In our previous careers, we noticed that our banking and finance customers faced mounting regulations, particularly since the recent financial crises, as well as a rapid increase in data volumes. We wanted to conceive a technical response to these two challenges in order to lower the risk of noncompliance, by relying on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Our solution leverages smart data processing to rapidly detect the cause of non compliance. Additionally, it uses the data to extract information of value to our customers’ other operational processes.

How did you end joining the FinTech Accelerator?

It was a fortunate chain of events! We first reached out to BNP Paribas Securities Services (BP2S), hoping to set up a meeting to present our solution. At the time, L’Atelier BNP Paribas was in the process of selecting start-ups for the first season of the Accelerator, and our contact suggested that we apply. We did just that, and we were selected!

After learning about it almost by chance, what did you expect from the Accelerator? What did you discover?

We already had an operational version of our project, so we were looking for commercial assistance to access the market. Or better yet: the BNP Paribas Group!

Right away, we received services—legal, marketing, technical—that we never would have accessed otherwise. We also benefited from the facilitator role played by the team from the L’Atelier Lab: a crucial role for streamlining relations between a small start-up and a major international Group.

Everything took off from there: after a month at the WAI, we joined the BP2S laboratory to co-develop a technical solution. We pooled Fortia’s technological expertise and the business know-how of the BP2S team to upgrade the solution and expand it to cover other needs.